Tag Archives: George Eliot

Library Book Club reading Silas Marner

Title page of a 1905 edition of Silas Marner, with illustrations by C. E. Brock. Published by J. M. Dent in London and E. P. Dutton in New York.

On Friday, December 13, the Library Book Club will hold our final discussion of 2013. Dr. Pete Fraser will lead a discussion of Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe, by George Eliot. The title character is a simple weaver who lives a solitary existence after being banished from his Calvinist community for a theft he did not commit. When he himself is robbed 15 years later, it seems as if Silas Marner’s bitterness will permanently harden in his heart until an orphaned and homeless girl shows up at his cottage on New Year’s Eve night.

George Eliot, along with Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, is regarded by most critics as one of the three greatest English novelists of the nineteenth century. At around 150 pages Silas Marner is the shortest of Eliot’s major novels and is an ideal introduction to her work. The Library has multiple copies of the novel in print and electronic formats.

Fight the pre-Christmas madness this December by reading a great work of literature with the Book Club. The discussion will take place at 12:00 in the Library Conference Room. Distance students and faculty are invited to join us via Google Hangouts. Here is the Library’s permanent link for all Hangout events: https:plus.google.comhangouts_eventc0lnc83s5ok7tecuqdcnjg0mcno?authuser=0&eid=100028809078157626561&hl=en